motherhood simplified

Tag: motherhood

I am a lover of art, of the arts, of all things artistic – even the random scribbles of my one-year old daughter. And I am so glad that all three of my kids will happily sit at the kitchen table and color away for hours on end. But seriously, I’m being overrun by artwork.

These are all beautiful gifts that I was given IN ONE DAY. Each one is heartfelt and beautiful, but can I really justify keeping them all? WHERE would I even keep them all?

And it’s not that I don’t keep some.

Two years ago, at the age of two, my oldest daughter Evangeline painted a series of beautiful pieces that have proudly hung on our dining room wall ever since.

My husband makes fun of me regularly for displaying these – which is probably why he hasn’t gotten around to building the frame I requested for these masterpieces. [He just doesn’t appreciate toddler art the way I do, I suppose.]

Currently, I save all the school artwork [at least two pieces a day] in a filing drawer which I intend to sort through and keep favorites at the end of the school year. As for the daily collections, I typically keep them for a few days until my kids have forgotten about them and then hide them strategically in the burn bin or recycling pile. [God forbid one of the kids stumble upon their artwork in the trash!]

Going forward, I intend to give each child a display where I will rotate their artwork. But still, most of it has to go.

Is that terrible? 🤷‍♀️

I have a feeling I’m going to miss this constant supply of creative gifts when my kids are older and don’t even want to give me the time of day. At the moment it feels limitless, but I know it’s not.

Currently accepting suggestions on better ways to treasure these pieces of art.

[I know this post is a day too late to be helpful for anyone this year – sorry ’bout that.]

Now that my oldest is in preschool, I get to prepare the obligatory Valentine’s Day gifts for my daughter to distribute to her classmates. As an avid Pinterest user and someone who loves all things crafty, I’ve been looking forward to this day, imagining all the cute, clever homemade card possibilities. However, I had the added challenge of finding something eco-friendly and plastic free and not candy and not wasteful and not crap that the other parents are just going to throw out and not wrapped in a plastic bag and [hopefully] not requiring me to go to the store and spend any money at all.

My solution: the cutie.

I did have to buy the cuties, but they happened to be on sale this week at my grocer and I had everything else at home – which was very important because, even though I was looking forward to this occasion, it snuck up on me, and yesterday I found myself scrambling to put together seventeen preschool Valentine’s Day gifts.

I didn’t want to wrap them in plastic bags, so I carefully tied them with string and put a cute little card to the top that I printed on green card stock. [Thank you, prettyprovidence.com for the free printable!]

My daughter drew hearts and her name on the back of each leaf. And since cuties are her favorite snack, she was very excited to give these to her classmates.

What I love most is that every part of this Valentine’s Day gift is either edible or compostable. I have no idea how many other families compost – but at least I know I have done my part.

This entire year, I have been on a journey to become a more mindful consumer, a more generous giver, and a less wasteful person in general. [Besides that, I have also worked very hard to eliminate all of our extra “stuff.”]

So, when Christmas time came around this year, I knew that some things had to change about the way we do gifts for our kids and loved ones.

But – how?

How do we still show everyone how much we love them without giving them a bunch of “stuff”? And how do we make more conscientious purchasing decisions while still giving people things that they will appreciate? And how do I provide my kids with the fun of unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning without a lot of toys that will just end up cluttering our space?

I still don’t have perfect answers, and we didn’t do a perfect job [I should have asked these questions before Christmas to get some help from the blogging world], but we made an effort, which is the most important thing.

Here’s what we did:

Experience gifts for extended family. We gave all of our siblings and their families experience memberships [like to the local zoo for those with little kids] or gift cards to spend on an experience [like jump zone for those with older kids] or amazon/restaurant gift cards for family members without kids.

The nice thing about this type of gift is that it doesn’t even require anything to be physically exchanged [I actually texted the amazon gift cards to my siblings – thank you, 21st century!]. Can’t get much more zero waste than that. And [for the most part], the gift can be enjoyed many times throughout the year.

BUT, the downside is that there is no physical gift to open.

Used toys for our kids. If we are going to have toys to open on Christmas, I felt like we should get them used [as much as we are able]. My kids are young enough to not care at all if a gift is new or not. [Hopefully, they will never care, but that is probably wishful thinking.] We bought an AMAZING wooden train set complete with a table and rails and trains and cars [probably 100+ pieces] for $35 from a family that no longer used it. And we got an art easel from friends who were getting rid of theirs and graciously gave it to us for free. These are types of things that last for years and can be loved by many children – and are plastic-free!

That being said, we did purchase new consumables for the art easel like markers and paint and notepads and things like that. Some things cannot be purchased used. I probably didn’t put enough thought into getting these things from responsible sources [or making my own]. I know I can improve in that area in the future.

Consumable gifts from the family. Anyone who asked what to get our kids, I suggested consumables like art and craft supplies, coloring books, temporary tattoos, bandaids, or gift cards for ice cream. This really helped cut down on the toys they received and this way everything will be used. We received ornaments from two families which the kids loved. Some were homemade which were adorable and meaningful and some were supporting international orphans – also very meaningful to us.

Homemade, meaningful, or consumable gifts for others. We made chocolate pretzels for our neighbors. We gave chocolates and amazon gift cards to Evangeline’s preschool teachers. We made ornaments for our aunts/cousins.

Our Auntie Paula, who does so much for our family, got a special homemade ornament: three hearts [one for each of my kids] hanging from a moon that said “Love you to the moon” – the special saying she shares with my kids. It might have been small and not cost us anything, but sometimes something special and made with love is the best gift.

Any other ideas/suggestions? I know there are other ways to give mindfully and meaningfully. If anyone has ideas to share, let me know so I can continue to improve in this area.

We love giving to our friends and family – but now I feel the pressure to purchase from responsible sources and not burden the recipients with stuff they don’t need. It is a strange balancing act that I am new [and not very good] at.

Overall, we stayed within budget and [hopefully] made everyone feel loved and appreciated this holiday season.

We don’t actually know Daisy’s birthday, but we picked her up two years ago on December 12th so I selected that as her unofficial birthday. Each year, we throw her a birthday party as part of our 25 Days of Christmas.

The kids helped me make her cake this year.

She always gets a homemade cake – which she devours in a matter of seconds.

We get cake too, of course.

Daisy is a good dog and we love her. She puts up with a lot, so she deserves some special treatment every once in a while.

Dec 13: Homemade Hot Cocoa

One of my favorite things about the cold weather is hot cocoa! And it’s so easy to make that I always make it myself [plus, I wouldn’t think of buying the boxes of individual hot chocolate packets].

We don’t typically make hot cocoa with all the extras – but this time we had marshmallows, chocolate chips, homemade whipped cream, and peppermint sticks.

Delicious! Especially being pregnant with no wine and limited coffee – I’m drinking plenty of hot chocolate this holiday season.

Dec 14: Sugar Cookie Cutouts

Yesterday, the kids and I made Christmas sugar cookies.

Dec 15: Santa and Carriage Ride

Today we went to Geneva and visited Santa.

Then we took a carriage ride through downtown.

The beautiful, sunny 45° weather was perfect!

I’m not certain what we’re doing tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to another warm day!

The Christmas festivities have continued, but I was getting sick of posting every day [as I’m sure you all were as well].

Dec 8: Baking Christmas Cookies

On the 8th day of Christmas, the kids and I spent most of the day baking Christmas cookies for [spoiler alert] Brett’s work party that we were hosting the following day.

No Bakes:

The Grinch Crinkle Cookies:

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies:

Oreo Christmas Trees:

I had planned to do the standard cut out sugar cookies as well, but my feet hurt and I was tired after four hours, so we called it quits. [Hard to believe that two months ago I ran for four hours straight and now I can’t even stand in my kitchen for four hours…ahh, pregnant life.]

Dec 9: Christmas Party

On the 9th day of Christmas, we hosted Brett’s management team for a Christmas party. We spent most of the day cleaning [since I haven’t been doing much housework these days 😬] and prepping for dinner, but the kids were allowed to stay up extra late to meet the guests and join in part of the party.

Dec 10: Arthur Christmas Movie Night

On the 10th day of Christmas, the kids and I watched Arthur Christmas for our “Monday movie night.” We had popcorn and movie candy – which are rare treats in our home.

Dec 11: Anniversary / Christmas Crafts with Auntie Paula

On the 11th day of Christmas, Brett and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary by going to dinner and a movie. Our wonderful Auntie Paula came over to watch the kids and she brought Christmas crafts for them to do.

It’s been fun!

We are already prepping for tonight’s annual celebration! [More on that at a later date.]

[I’m usually not a fan of doing anything purely for the sake of tradition – but I suppose the Christmas season is an exception.]

So we bundled up the kids….

[And I mean bundled. Jo could barely move under all the layers.]

…and we headed to downtown Geneva to do the Christmas Walk thing – which is really just an excuse for most people to shop at the local shops and eat at the local restaurants. We don’t do any shopping though. We wade through the sea of people to countdown to the lighting of the big tree in front of city hall and we stand in unbelievably long lines for half an ounce of melted chocolate and a piece of freshly pulled candy cane.

For those three small things, it took one hour and forty five minutes.

😱

We must be insane. This is what Christmas does to us.

But it was cool to watch them make candy canes in the Graham’s shop window and to eat them just after they were made – still warm!

And there were carolers on the street corners, and a living nativity, and Christmas lights on the trees, and Christmas music being blasted in the streets… all good Christmas cheer type of stuff that I love.

Last year, we waited forever to take the kids to see Santa, but after a potty emergency and all of us losing feeling in our faces and all of our digits, we decided to skip Santa this year and hightail it outta there! [We literally ran most of the way back to the car.]

I think next year we’re going to skip it unless it’s above 20°…maybe 30°.